Observations focused on the problems of an underdeveloped country, Venezuela, with some serendipity about the world (orchids, techs, science, investments, politics) at large. A famous Venezuelan, Juan Pablo Perez Alfonzo, referred to oil as the devil's excrement. For countries, easy wealth appears indeed to be the sure path to failure. Venezuela might be a clear example of that.

Blog Stats

Chavez’ Nationwide Address Interrupted, As Guayana Workers Protest

August 20, 2012

Tonight, Chavez nationwide address was interrupted when Guayana workers broke into the stage and started protesting. Chavez tried to go into the Hornest Nest, but it did not work well. Guayana workers are tired of promises. Is this a turning point in the campaign?

And this was the preamble to the protest: Mr. President, we haven’t had a collective contract for three years. And one more thing…!

You guys should remember this:
in all these processes the different groups will never consider themselves “neutral”, ever…or just “el pueblo”. They will always claim to be the true representatives of the Pueblo, the purest of the revolutionaries.
Heck, Tascón himself was still trying to come to terms with Chávez after the autocrat had given him the boot. Even Henry Falcón tried to be conciliatory for a while even if Chávez had already turned his thumb down.

Chavismo doesn’t even deserve the title “crappy socialism”, it’s even lower than that, it’s just banana cult to a military caudillo framed with socialist slogans.

Still, we can observe a similar behaviour in the past when Soviet Union existed:

When Trotsky was thrown out, he still claimed to be the real revolutionary. When the Stalin purges took place, those who managed to have the time to “defend themselves” always tried to show how faithful they were to Stalin and they showed their love to Stalin until the bitter end. That was mostly to no avail.

That was, of course, a reign of terror. We do not have terror in Venezuela.
We just have – in these cases – mostly what you call in classic Venezuelan
“culillo”: culillo de perder el trabajo, las conecciones.

[…] it did not work well. The television channel moved the cameras from the stage during the protest. The Devil’s Excrement says Guayana workers are tired of empty promises from the Chavez regime. Is […]

thanks, LD. I read (in the not-dependable Noticiero Digital) an account, not sure if by a fantasist, that one reason the audio was cut — as Chávez shows the crowd the bottle — is that one of the hecklers recommended to the mico what exactly he could do with that bottle. You get my drift.

Some say the call was for “Chávez … milicia”, perhaps from the still deluded adherents who wanted to intimidate those around them who got brave and heckled for their rights (to be paid).

El Nacional report mentions that the call was for “justicia”. I doubt that.

The truth hurts, all these names from the US propaganda and intox machine, like albion boy and norskediv, we call it breadwriters ! writing for money, they did it in the florida newspapers about the cubans, very amusing !

Oh christ…where to even BEGIN?? Do you even LIVE in Venezuela, or for that matter been there?? If you have you literally must be blind.

First of all look up the number of companies that have shut down during this governments tenure. Then look at the companies that are technically still operational but basically are just unproductive shells, then look at the amount of ranchos and buhoneros on the street…they just keep getting bigger and bigger. But damn…don’t take my word for it, OR the BBCs which is a million miles away as far as being in the trenches is concerned, how about the chavista workers who protested at this meeting?? Let me guess…they weren’t actually chavista workers, they were CIA agents sent by the empire. And you want to talk disparity…HA! There is the FIRST clue that you have no idea what is going on in Venezuela. Do you have any idea that Cessna (they make private planes…expensive ones) had a record sales year a couple years ago due to the sales they make in Venezuela? Or have you seen the amount of yachts that are moored in Los Roques? Or how about the kids that go to my old school in the morning after having just commuted from Aruba that same morning in their dads private jet and then got to Caracas by helicopter? Do you even KNOW how much a new apartment in Colinas de Valle Arriba costs or a house in La Lagunita costs nowadays?? Ill give you a hint…its millions (of dollars). If you calculate how long an average worker (not to mention the guy that sells hot dogs) would need to work to pay for that you would run out of numbers on a calculator screen.

And yeah, maybe Latin American poverty is at a new low…but you’re going to compare Brazil, and Chile with Venezuela?? The average of an entire continent does not make ONE country better you moron! That’s like saying that because Germany is doing well, and Spain is doing poorly, you can average them out and say both are doing ok.

You truly are a blind moron. And I guess I am a moron too…cause why the hell else would I even bother talking sense with you?? Crap…now Im even more pissed cause I wasted my time writing this to you.

All this just reenforces in Chavez’s mind why he has to
kill democracy in Venezuela.

This is the last election in Venezuela, even though it won’t
be free, what happened on TV is just talk for the intellectuals, and internet pundits, the fix is in, the days of game changers has long gone.

Somos combatientes de Sidor? En qué segundo dicen eso?
Doesn’t make sense with milicia.
Perhaps it was two groups: the ones saying “somos combatientes de SIDOR” so as to say they were not like us, “majunches”, but also revolutionaries and yet they wanted to say something and the others, who were the absolute fundamentalists.

It is indeed very much “milicia”. There was a melee. It was not like all were anti-Chávez but rather in a sea of sheep there were a considerable number of people who had planned to go for the microphone. Remember that meeting was not about
one group united alone. There were different sections and organisations there. Many were brought from such places as Monagas and Anzoátegui.
Some were hard-core sheep from Bolivar, but some others were people with some sort of independent brain and those were the ones going for the microphones or supporting the ones going for the microphones. Some of the first ones asked for the milicias to intervene.

There are milicias there everywhere and they are most of the time NOT with rifles in fatigues. They are in civilian clothing mostly (they also have a uniform, but usually when there is a planned training).
They are trained to read to these things just like they do in Cuba. They are the plain-clothes apaga-fuegos.

I would call that a “game changer”. A bunch of workers were fed up enough to not be afraid of Chavez and show it on national television. It shows Chavez as weak and vulnerable. Dictators that look weak and vulnerable don’t keep their jobs very long.

The next Cadena will have hundreds of people ready with prepared testimonials on how grateful they are to have a great leader like Chavez.
Moreover, a new 15 second telecast delay will enable Chavez to prevent any display or protest from getting broadcast.

Just another nail in the coffin. The “Perfect Storm” of events is coming together. He couldn’t be having a worse campaign. The country falling apart, people dying all over the place, his faithful becoming disloyal, etc., etc.

I’ll bet he didn’t sleep well last night. Narcissistic people like him don’t take criticism well.

what does that mean? Are they negotiating just the salaries? It would be interesting to know what they earn now and what their production level is.
Or are they working as externals or temporary workers or don’t have social security?
What is it?
It would be so very cool if we actually had journalists in Venezuela.

Look to the lower left corner in the first video (0:23-0:36). There was some abrupt movement at the time and there is a guy in red shirt apparently holding a micro, he is tipped from behind by someone in a red-pink shirt to go forward. It looks like they wanted to confront Chávez with some demands (then signal go to outdoors).
Also it looks like in the upper right corner somebody did something (pull a plug?) as everyone looks in that direction and the edecán goes in that direction too (look at his face 😉 )

I suspect that Chavez and his followers are running out of ideas, time and money- all at the same moment. All incompetent dictators eventually do. Chavez probably had more time than most, as he had oil to sell, so he could cover up his errors better than most. “If” Chavez wins the election it will be a race to see if the cancer or his incompetence kills him first, assuming he even makes it to the election.

Insofar as Hugo has ideas, they mostly consist of fear of the United States. Hard to build an electoral platform off of, especially without any kind of plausible territory dispute or US invasion. If Chavez were smarter, he would have pushed hard to recover any uninhabited disputed islands, or thought some up. Inevitably, the US would have tried to step in as mediator at which point Chavez could have demagogued about US interference (As in: The South China sea). Luckily for humanity, Chavez is too much of a coward to do that.

I don’t think so. I think it was milicia, that sound sounds labial (either m or b), whereas justicia is a sound from the back (glotal in Venezuela).

My take: some people were being more clear about their anger than the bloke on the second video. The hard-core Chavistas who were watching them were calling for their banana Sturmtruppen to take the protesters away…because everyone there knows the milicias are always set up for this kind of “situations”.

One of the tasks for the milicias is precisely to neutralise people that look like themselves but are not with the Proceso…better that they do that than soldiers…so people know “es el pueblo que no los quiere”.

I would have loved to be there, there was some spectacle and Hugo’s sphincter must have felt a little bit what it felt when Hugo was at the Museo Militar in 1992.

Again: my interpretation is that there were some people screaming or trying to do something, others there (probably those with contrato colectivo, from other organisations, whatever) saw them and started to call the milicias to act. Like: bueno, que venga la milicia aquí, pa que saquen a esos que quieren crear un chanchullo.